Sunday, July 27, 2014

I've kind of given up on Battlefield 4 videos although last night I had my first EPIC experience in the game but it's always a coin toss as to whether I'll be able to monetize my work or worse have it pulled down by the cold steely gaze of the Content ID system.Actually one of these got tripped up by Content ID but I was able to remove the "infringing" content.You have to wonder if EA, Activision or Valve would sell so many games if fans didn't make cool game videos. Anyway, these 2 videos are of my latest adventure with Poker Night 2. Admittedly not quite the action romp of a Battlefield game but amusing none the less. Have a look!

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Trolls, trolls, trolls everywhere.Just finished a Friday night gaming session in Battlefield 4 with half of my time on the ground a la' FPS and the other half as commander.The last game I played was as a commander and for what it's worth, it's the role I play the most in Battlefield 4 because the game is still horribly broken as an FPS. But I still like to mix it up.So this last game I joined already had the enemy team up by 200 tickets in just under 5 minutes on an 800 ticket map. Now the formula in BF4 goes something like this...Point spread between teams after 10 minutes > 300 tickets = lose.It's a classic numbers game. Either the other team is a bunch of hardcore players with sh!t buckets (as in Southpark's WoWepisode) or someone's got a cheat that they're getting full value out of.The other option is that everyone sucks but let's face it, nobody sucks that bad...Either way a decent commander can help but he's only as good as the team he's commanding.So it is with Battlefield 4. In the last game I came in about 10 minutes after it started and the other commander instantly threw a proxy attack at me. That disables me from doing anything for my teammates for 15 seconds and it's more annoying than anything else. A good commander uses proxy attacks sparingly. For one thing, they take forever to recharge and telegraph your intentions to the enemy commander. It has zero effect on ground troops aside from disabling any scanning, missile attacks or gunship attacks that may be in progress. Which can be very effective if a commander knows how to time them. So I called this guy out and of course he responded with all the intelligence a preteen could muster and then left in a huff. That resulted in the other teamnot having the benefit of a commander which actually helped
even up the odds a bit.

Now it wasn't my intention that he leave but I guess I hurt his feelings. Hey buddy, get over it...No matter, I'll take the edge wherever I can get it...Battlefield 4 is one of those testosterone charged pastimes like football or soccer where reason is short and emotion is very, very long.

His leaving was actually a good thing. It let me help my
team without his shenanigans to distract me.

Long story short, by the end of the game the tickets were literally down to 1 to 1. We lost but we made it a game and I let my team know that.Perhaps that's the point. So long as we did all we could and I supported my team as best I could it's still a win.Closing that point gap is a pretty rare occurrence in BF4 and I'd like to think I helped with that.I communicated to my team and dropped supplies where I thought they needed them, scanned for enemy resources and basically did whatever I could to support them.But all was notcamaraderie
and Kumbaya during the game, there was dissent in the ranks....One player wanted to kick the commander, that being me by the way. Apparently he wasn't happy with my efforts.So in response I wrote in the chat window..."Hey, if you guys don't want me just type a 1 in the chat window and I'll leave"Guess what....Nobody typed a "1"In fact the other players defended my efforts and in the end everyone seemed happy with the outcome. So perhaps that's a lesson about trolls. If you want to shut them up, just give them the opportunity to look like asses.If I had seen a bunch of "1's" I would have left. That's the thing. Don't stay where you aren't wanted and you're life will be much easier.Think about it...

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

I've been having some issues with FRAPS lately and I appear to have narrowed down the cause to the program's inability to deal with multiple monitors on the Windows 7 Aero Desktop.

This isn't the standard DWM option not showing up. It's an issue that shows up when you review the captured video. If you maximize a screen then minimize that same screen you'll see a flicker or the window entirely disappear.

The fix is simple but it's annoying that there's no option in FRAPS to deal with multiple monitors.